NSA surveillance reach broader than publicly acknowledgedThe National Security Agency's surveillance network has the capacity to spy on 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Citing current and former NSA officials for the 75 percent figure, the paper reported that the agency can observe more of Americans' online communications than officials have publicly acknowledged.

The NSA's system of programs that filter communications, achieved with the help of telecommunications companies, is designed to look for communications that either start or end abroad, or happen to pass through the U.S. between foreign countries. However, the officials told the Journal that the system's reach is so broad, that it is more likely that purely domestic communications will be intercepted as a byproduct of the hunt for foreign ones.

The NSA defended the program in a statement to Fox News.

"NSA's signals intelligence mission is centered on defeating foreign adversaries who aim to harm the country. We defend the United States from such threats while fiercely working to protect the privacy rights of U.S. persons. It's not either/or. It's both," the statement said.

The system works by using algorithms that act as filters, designed to let high-value information through amid more benign chatter. However, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, a former to intelligence official told the Journal that the government changed its definition of "reasonable" intelligence collection, enabling the NSA to widen the holes in the "filtering" system.

The details are the latest to emerge about the NSA's operations and capabilities, as authorities in the U.S. and other countries try to stop the release of more information about the elaborate surveillance network. Members of Congress on the intelligence committees, as well as past intelligence officials, recently have spoken up in defense of the agency, particularly after a report showing the agency had broken privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times.

The NSA programs described by the Journal differ from the programs described by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in a series of leaks earlier this summer. Snowden described a program to acquire Americans' phone records, as well as another program, known as PRISM, that made requests from Internet companies for stored data. By contrast, the Internet monitoring systems have the capability to track almost any online activity, so long as it is covered by a broad court order.

The National Security Agency has developed surveillance programs that reach more Internet communications of Americans than have publicly been disclosed, according to current and formal officials cited in a Wall Street Journal article posted online Tuesday night.

The NSA has developed a surveillance network that can reach about 75 percent of all Internet traffic in the U.S., officials told the Journal. While the spy agency's filtering programs were designed to mine communications either originating from or ending abroad, the system is likely to gather purely domestic communications as well, the Journal reported.

The surveillance operates with major telecommunications companies like AT&T, according to the report. AT&T wouldn't comment to the Journal.

The Washington Post has reported that NSA surveillance collects content from phone calls made using the Internet and emails sent within the U.S.

NSA officials have defended the surveillance, saying they respect Americans' privacy. NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told The Wall Street Journal that the agency implements "minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons" when domestic communications are "incidentally collected during NSA's lawful signals intelligence activities."

The NSA is "not wallowing willy-nilly" through online content, another official quoted by the newspaper said. "We want high-grade ore."

NSA spying is approved and overseen by the secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The first public look at one of the court's orders came from a trove of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in June. The top-secret order compels a Verizon unit to give the NSA metadata on all its customers' calls for a three-month period.

And the libtards thought Bush was EVIL! Obama is secretly doubling or tripling up on everything Bush ever thought about doing. Where is the outrage from the libtards now? crickets.

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August 25th, 2013, 7:07 am

regularjoe12

Off. Coordinator – Joe Lombardi

Joined: March 30th, 2006, 12:48 amPosts: 3955Location: Davison Mi

Re: NSA surveillance reach broader than publicly acknowledge

slybri19 wrote:

And the libtards thought Bush was EVIL! Obama is secretly doubling or tripling up on everything Bush ever thought about doing. Where is the outrage from the libtards now? crickets.

Not one single major protest in DC over this that I have heard of......disgusting! From either side. Meanwhile the major media was making top story priority an old woman who said a bad word to keep the NSA off the front page. No one noticed that something so insignifificant was what they were being force fed, all the while dismissing the importance of what Snowden showed us.